The Christmas market in the little village in and around the castle above the Rhine waterfall – all of which I visited the very next day after the outing shown in the last couple posts in the mountains above Bellinzona, much further south in Switzerland. At the bottom you see the tunnel under this caste, as taken from the rail and foot bridge over the river.
Last photos from the cable car up (with sun) and down (without sun) during my manic effort to see and walk across the Tibetan-style hanging bridge in the hills north and west of Bellinzona, back in November. For orientation, in the photo above, the main city of Bellinzona with its three UNESCO historic castles is to the left, west, around the corner and between the ridge of mountains we’re descending, and the ridge formed with the moutain across the valley. In case you were curious…
All taken in Bodø between 14:30 when we docked and 15:30 when we pulled away. It was the first significant port call after we entered the arctic circle.
With my 400-day goal (of daily posts) set to be reached in slightly more than a week, I’ve decided it’s time to splurge all my remaining Seine-bridge images from last October’s short stay in Paris.
16:55 the 22nd of January, above; 08:58 the next morning, below. In between, roughly 20 minutes before the photo below, our boat entered the arctic circle. I thought this series would mostly be northern lights photos, but the general lingering light in these short northern days was endlessly fascinating as dawn and dusk lasted so long.
No, that ice bear is not staffing the actual reception at the Snowhotel Kirkenes – that happens in a brick and mortar type building with heating, computers and so on. But this is the entrance the actual place you sleep on your actual (literal) ice bed. (Ice = water = source, as a reminder of this weird little series I’ve begun.) When I first showed you Kirkenes, I promised a photo of said ice beds. But it turns out I neglected to photograph the actual beds themsevles- sorry. I really thought I’d done so. Allow the various other ice furniture shown below to spark your imagination, along with the instruction manual from the (regular building, heated) changing room. For orientation, the ice sculptures below are just inside the entrance in the snow mound you see at the bottom. That mound is the thing itself, but to be clear: one only sleeps in the room; one does not linger in it during the rest of the non-sleep time of one’s stay. One instead catches King Crab or hangs out in the heated guest lounge drinking hot tea :-)…or feeds the reindeer, pets the huskies or sits by the outdoor fire, all of which we’ll show you in future posts.
…and the next day our port call at Trondheim was long enough for a lovely walking exploration of this city, which I used to think of as quite far north until I went much farther north in the days after our boat pulled away at the end of the port call in which I took all these photos :-).
(so much world, so little time....) 